


Vanishing Point

by allthegoodnamesaretakendammit



Category: Jack Reacher (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Older Man/Younger Woman, Slice of Life, Unresolved Sexual Tension, chosen family, crushes are hard, possibly unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 06:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12676353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit/pseuds/allthegoodnamesaretakendammit
Summary: 4:30PM, Sam:MISS ME YET???4:33PM, Unknown Number:Not even a little.





	Vanishing Point

 

He’s not her father. That’s what makes it okay for her to be needy, to text him the same day that he leaves.

4:30PM, Sam:  _MISS ME YET???_

4:33PM, Unknown Number:  _Not even a little._

It’s good that he’s such a bad liar. Honestly, she can barely hear the chime of her phone over the echo in her ears--the sound that their bodies made when Sam had slammed into him and wrapped herself around him as tight as she could. The sound of him breathing, his jacket creaking under her hands.

There are a lot of echoes in her ears these days. Gunshots in New Orleans, gossip at Pembroke. Sam washes it away by mentally replaying what she’d learned in drawing class: cross-hatching, gradients, negative space. These are what she uses to draw Reacher’s eyes over and over. It’s an outlet. It’s a way of looking at him without the risk of him looking back.  

When she can’t put up with her Paris-obsessed roommates anymore, she’ll hang out in one of the empty classrooms where it’s dark and quiet. The art room with the floor to ceiling windows is the best--which all of these preps insist on calling “the drawing room.” Snobs. At least they’re nice snobs. But really, you could say the same about Susan and Helen.

Because, wouldn’t you know it, all of the Reacher women keep in touch. Most of their conversations go like this:

9:42PM, Sam: _im pretty sure he busted a human trafficking ring in Texas last year_

9:44PM, Helen: _Of course he did._

All three of them are permanently fed up with him, stifling their surprise at him, and hoping he drops by soon. In a strange way, it’s a kind of like having a family again. Which always gets her thinking about those nice old hippies who really and truly didn’t deserve what they got. Whose only crime was baking a batch of special brownies and looking the other way when Sam brought home a pair of headphones that she obviously couldn’t afford. Whose only mistake was letting her into their house and then, worst of all, letting her stay.

Pembroke hasn’t quite decided that letting her stay was a mistake, though. The headmistress has a soft spot for her, which has a decidedly Susan-ish smell around it. Sam makes a conscious decision not to raise a stink about it because she’s starting to like it here: freckly Hannah from history who always tells Sam that her crappiest doodles are _cool_ and _edgy._ The ice cream sundae bar in the cafeteria every Monday night. It was a cozy place, once the adrenaline wore off.

Reacher was right to think she’d be safe here. He was just wrong about when, and from what.

He’s still not her father.

He’s something more, something less.

*

Being surrounded by teenage girls has made her obsessed with her own hair again: brushing it, fishtail-braiding it, buying teeny tiny jars of moroccan oil to put in it. Her roommates always know when it’s her hair caught in the sink, since hers is longer than anyone else’s and twice as blonde. They call her Rapunzel when they’re ticked off by it. Sam hates it.

When Reacher’s pissed at her for trying to tell him what to do-- _you should look into sgt. anderson’s disappearance in pensacola, CALL SUSAN SHE MISSES YOU, get a driver’s license for christs sake_ \--he calls her Uncle Sam. She fucking loves it.

She loves it even before she realizes that name-calling is a prelude to stuff like birthday gifts.

10:16AM, Sam: _he sent me a swiss army knife for my bday. Wtf???_

She sends the text with a picture attached because it has to be seen in order to be believed: a sturdy wooden grip hiding an awl, three different kinds of knives, and, somehow, a pair of scissors. And those are just the parts that she’s figured out so far. It’s the vigilante drifter’s equivalent of a Rolex. Two minutes later, her phone pings.

10:18AM, Helen: _That’s how you know you’re his favorite._

10:18AM, Sam: _yeah right_

10:19AM, Susan: _Looks to me like you stole his heart, Sam._

And all Sam can hear are the words: _You’re a little thief._

Well. She’ll make an even better thief with this thing in her pocket. Pembroke is preppy as hell, but it’s full of easy marks. Plus, the beds are soft here. And housekeeping does the laundry for you, which is dumb and wasteful until you’re the one that never has to scrub ketchup stains out your own shirt again.

*

Helen wants her to become a lawyer. Susan wants her to enlist. Reacher’s too smart to tell her what he wants her to be.

Sam wonders if her record or her grades will allow for any of that. As it turns out, she’s still pretty shitty at schoolwork. But for the stuff that’s actually useful, she writes B-worthy essays and she remembers her own thesis statements when she’s trying to fall asleep.

Philosophy. It’s fine because we’re already dead. Anything goes because everything, _everyone_ goes.

Psychology. Westermarck is Freud is Maslow.

English. The only book she really remembers by the end of term is _Catcher in the Rye_ \--and even then, it’s only because she identifies way too much with Holden Caulfield.

And then there is drawing, and then sculpture, and then multimedia. She sends Reacher pictures of her work, but only the good stuff. She can tell she’s getting better at it because he’s running out of things to say: _it’s good, I like that one,_ and _aren’t you a little young to be working with nude models?_

She’s too young for a lot of things.

*

In junior year, she meets up with him at Niagara Falls, when she sneaks away from the wet blanket leading the field trip and sits down at his booth in Martha’s Diner.

He looks the same, which is both a relief and not-a-relief. Sloping shoulders, a twitch in his jaw, eyes that burn. The same narc-y haircut, too.

So she tells him, “You still look like a narc.”

“You still look like a thief.”

They only order coffee. By one, the waitress who looks exactly like Kandy will in another twenty years stops coming by their table.

At half-past two, they step outside and Sam thinks that the wet blanket will definitely have noticed that she’s gone by now. She’ll have to leave him soon. There’s still so much she hasn’t convinced herself to say. A shiver rattles her, from the thought of everything unspoken and from the coat that she’d purposely left at home. Reacher takes the bait. Warmth envelopes her shoulders as he tugs his leather jacket around her.

She walks back to the hotel parking lot in a daze, running her fingers all over his coat. There’s a rough patch near the zipper that may or may not be a lingering bloodstain, but that’s okay because it just means that this coat is really his.

After the wet blanket has given her a stern talking-to and warns her that the headmistress will be hearing about this young ma'am, all of the girls cram themselves back into the bus. Hannah reassures Sam that she doesn't miss much before disappearing back into her book. Sam picks a window seat near the front of the bus and leans against the cool glass, zipping the jacket up over her nose. She is transported half an hour back by the smell of leather, rough and gruff like him, but yielding to the touch and still warm from his body. She wears that jacket and she wears it and she wears it, not wanting to let it lose that heat. In history class, the bitch in the wig teaches them about the vestal virgins of Rome who kept a single fire going for centuries, draped in white and temple-bound.

Sam puts her hands in the jacket pockets and fingers the loose thread inside, thinking, _This is a jacket that has been places._

When class lets out, she finally texts Helen and Susan.

2:56PM, Sam:  _i met up with him at niagara falls on tuesday. he still drinks too much coffee, but he seems good_

And then she remembers to add:

2:57PM, Sam:  _no bruises or black eyes. wasn’t limping or anything_

She likes talking to Helen and Susan. It makes her feel grown up, but not like they’re just humoring her. If anything, they tend to pump her for information on where Reacher’s heading next. She feels needed, relied upon. Sam likes to offer information without being asked, in the hopes that they’ll do the same--in the hopes that they’ll all get a bigger glimpse into his life. They all want a little more of him than they’re allowed to have. Maybe in different ways; maybe in the exact same way.

And Sam… Sam is looking for something weird. That’s the shitty part about part accusing people. You always end up on the other end of it at some point.

*

She sees him again in Nashville.

She’s sure he looks the same, but she doesn’t see him the same way. Her eyes keep drifting to the cross-contour lines around his eyes, the way they crinkle when he doesn’t want to smile. The ink-wash of an uneven tan between his forearm and the top of his hand. The stippling of stubble on his jaw. Sam admits to herself, perhaps for the first time, just how old he is. It doesn’t change anything.

She wants him.

But it’s a delicate thing between the two of them. The shape of it is drawn carefully by the angle of their bodies, how far they’re sitting apart on the park bench. Meaningful absence. Negative space.

He’s the father she’d asked for, but hadn’t gotten and hadn’t wanted. But by God, she wants him now.

Sam usually thinks of him as a figure on the horizon line--too far to tell whether he’s retreating or approaching, right on the vanishing point. But here and now, he’s beside her, waiting for her to say something. But there’s nothing to say.

So she flicks out her Swiss Army knife, bullies him into handing over his watch, and starts carving onto the inside of the leather strap, pressing the awl into it gently like she’d learned to in art class. She smooths out the design with blunt butt of the knife and hands the watch back to him. Reacher huffs a breath at seeing what she’s drawn there: a pair of eyes, small ones with pupils that follow you from every angle. Her eyes.

“Now you know,” she tells him as he buckles it back onto his wrist, as close as a promise. “I’ve got my eyes on you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I’m sorry, and you’re welcome.
> 
> Sam’s history teacher exaggerates the strictures placed on vestal virgins’ conduct. They had some measure of personal freedom, and the fire actually did go out a couple of times.
> 
> Please let me know if you spotted any spelling errors. Don't be shy! It's a tiny fandom, so let's be friends.


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